By: Yehuda Berg
Remember that sense of wonder and curiosity we had when we were kids? Where did it go?
This month is our opportunity to find out.
Capricorn is peculiar in that people born under this sign typically start out mature, and become immature with age – the opposite of the rest of us. Most of us associate age with responsibility, burdens, and becoming serious. For Capricorns it’s the reverse. I have a young Capricorn friend all of seven years old, and she is always so quiet and reserved, rarely crying or complaining, whereas my older Capricorn friends are typically jovial, lighthearted, and youthful.
As my father and teacher Rav Berg often says, the only difference between kids and adults is, we’ve become adulterated.
As children, our imaginations were vibrant, and our hearts were open. Everything amazed and enthralled us, and anything was possible. We believed the bad guy always lost and the tooth fairy snuck into our rooms at night and put money under our pillows. We experienced life first-hand and always with a sense of newness and unbridled curiosity.
Then someone whispered in our ear, “you know, the tooth fairy really doesn’t exist”; we saw the bad guys winning; we were forced to “grow up already!” and face the world. We became logical and allowed our cooler heads to prevail rather than our purity of heart.
This month (more so than any other month of the year), we can renew our innocence and wake up our excitement for life!
Another great quality about kids is their ability to rebound from setbacks. When a child comes crying to you with a scraped knee, acting as if his world is crumbling, all it takes to get him out of a bad mood is an ice cream cone. And yet, when life scrapes us and someone offers us, “honey, I love you,” “you’re such a good person,” or some other kindness, it doesn’t work so easily, does it? Wouldn’t it be amazing if that’s all it took to transform our bad moods?
The kabbalists say this is one of the three most challenging months of the year. (Cancer and Leo are the other two.) However, we know for a kabbalist that challenging means a greater opportunity to reveal Light. During these next 29 days, if we can restore those qualities we stored away long ago, if we can soften our hearts, and if we can get back to the joy and simple pleasures of life, then we can regain the realization that everything we need is already inside.
